Part 23 (1/2)

JULIA SWEENEY, Cast Member: I came from the Groundlings. I was performing there for a few years, and I think it seemed like every week an increasingly more important person from SNL would come and watch. And then, in the end, it came down between me and Lisa Kudrow. And so Lorne came and we did like a showcase for me and Lisa - we each got to do three sketches, and I ended up getting chosen. And I remember thinking afterward, ”I hope Lisa does okay.”

LISA KUDROW, Host: Thank G.o.d I didn't get Sat.u.r.day Night Live! I had met Laraine Newman at the Groundlings, and she let me know that she thought I was really funny and really good. So she called Lorne Michaels and said he should really look at me. Then I found out they were also going to look at Julia Sweeney. Julia and I got to be friends over this. I remember us being on the phone and talking about what a crazy, hideous situation this was for us. There was going to be one show that we were going to do, and based on that one show, a big chunk of our career was going to be decided.

So Lorne came out with Marci Klein, the talent coordinator, and there was one night set aside at the Groundlings for them to look at Julia Sweeney and myself. Julia had a lot of people in the audience. I had some friends in the audience. I even had some good friends who were writers on the show. Conan O'Brien was writing on the show, and I asked him if he could be in the audience. He actually thought that wouldn't look so good. So I just thought, yeah, the cla.s.sier route is not to stack the audience. I don't think I did my best, and, rightly so, they picked Julia.

There've been a couple things that I didn't get or got fired from where friends of mine who had a little more experience said, ”It's always a blessing when a door closes, because another door is going to open.” And there's no such thing as your whole career being decided in one night. I just kept believing that I was being saved by not doing Sat.u.r.day Night Live to do something else.

JULIA SWEENEY:.

I felt really accepted and encouraged and appreciated right away. In some ways my trajectory was the opposite of other people's who probably were more successful there in the end. My first show was Jimmy Smits, and I did a sketch with Jimmy right after the ”Update” spot, which is like an important sketch spot. And so I felt like I came in with a bang. I didn't come in and hang out and only do teeny parts in sketches waiting until I could get a bigger part. So that was really encouraging for me.

Lorne had wisely paired me up in an office with Christine Zander, and we hit it off immediately. She had been there a few years and knew how to navigate herself around politically there. So the beginning was really great.

ADAM SANDLER:.

It helped my whole career when I went from a stand-up comedian who would write maybe a couple of jokes a week that I would be excited about to - I think I was twenty-three when I got on the show - all of a sudden writing a few skits a week and helping other guys out with their ideas and trying to do jokes for their skits. All of a sudden, I thought about writing more. I thought about what really makes me laugh.

FRED WOLF:.

My little group that came up on that Sat.u.r.day Night Live were Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, David Spade, and Dennis Miller. It was a giant cast. The first time I was there, I was writing for the guys who were featured players who weren't really getting on the air as much as maybe they'd want to. And so I concentrated on writing for Schneider, Spade, Adam Sandler, and, you know, whenever I could, I'd throw some stuff everyone else's way too. But I mainly wrote with those guys. And then, when Norm Macdonald was at it, he was another friend of mine and so I wrote with him and for him also.

DAVID MANDEL, Writer: I was in the Lampoon and, between my junior and senior year, we did a project down at Comedy Central which was called ”MTV, Give Me Back My Life.” It was a fake ten-year-anniversary doc.u.mentary for MTV. And Al Franken was an adviser to it. And the following summer, Al and a guy named Billy Kimble and a couple of the executives from Comedy Central who had been on the show that I worked on for the Lampoon went on to do the comedy coverage of the Democratic and Republican conventions.

And they all remembered me and hired me back. So I went and worked on that. I spent all summer doing the Democratic and Republican stuff with Al and, at the end of the summer, he basically said, ”You're funny. I'm going to talk to Jim and Lorne and get you on Sat.u.r.day Night Live.” Which was perhaps one of the great moments of my life.

TIM MEADOWS, Cast Member: A well-written sketch is basically anything by Jack Handey or Robert Smigel. Those guys write sketches that are refres.h.i.+ng to watch and different takes on the subjects or comic premise. It's original.

BOB ODENKIRK:.

I would like to state for the record that Robert Smigel saved sketch comedy in America. I think he was the best sketch writer in America for like that ten-year period, his first ten years there. And as great as Jim Downey is, and as pure as he is, I think Robert was really hitting his stride and, you know, doing amazing things - everything from a McLaughlin Group to the James Kirk sketch to a lot of Perot stuff to so much great stuff, like that opening where Steve Martin sings ”I'm not going to phone it in tonight”: Smigel. I mean just genius work. Solid, amazing, brilliant, and smart.

CONAN O'BRIEN, Writer: I love Robert. We all do. We actually have a word that I invented at SNL, because whenever someone tells a Robert story they start by saying, ”Look, I love Robert, he's talented, he's prolific, I love him, I love him - but.” And then they tell the story about something horrible that he did. So about two years ago, I said, ”Whenever we talk about Robert, we waste all this time - time is precious here - and we waste all this time doing the first part before you actually say, 'But, you know, he killed my cat,' or whatever.” And I said, ”From now on, instead of that part, we'll just say 'chipple.'” I made up this word, and it worked, because now people just go, ”chipple,” and that saves a lot of time.

Partly because it really is a live show and not live-on-tape like The Tonight Show or Late Show with David Letterman, SNL has a history filled with surprises, shocks, major and minor calamities, and, most of all, controversies. But all of the show's dustups were trifling compared to the brouhaha that erupted in September 1992. In a gesture that had not been rehea.r.s.ed nor revealed to anyone on the show's staff in advance, singer Sinead O'Connor ended a haunting a cappella rendition of a modern protest ballad by tearing up a photograph of the Pope on the air, thus indicating the song had really been an attack on him and the Catholic Church. That turned out to be haunting too, but in the worst way.

JOHN ZONARS, Music Coordinator: I was in the control booth. I was the one who basically put the whole thing together, unfortunately. Essentially what happened was she was performing on the show with an orchestra on the first song she was doing, and the second song was a selection from a record that she had done a cappella. We rehea.r.s.ed it that way on Thursday. Everything was all fine and well, and we got through it. She refused to tape a promo, which we all thought was really rude. And that was a difficult thing to handle, actually, at the time. On Thursday afternoons we always taped the promos, and Lorne was actually coming in and producing. These days the writers do it. But she refused to do it and left in a huff, and there was sort of blame cast around for that, which I was involved in.

Anyhow, I didn't think much of it until Sat.u.r.day afternoon when they came in to do their audio balance at five-thirty - ”they” meaning the band and Sinead and her manager at the time, who I think has pa.s.sed away. They came in, and the manager cornered me and asked me a very poignant question, which was, ”When something goes wrong on the air, do you use the dress rehearsal performance?” I said to him, ”It's been known to happen for the West Coast, but for the live show, obviously it's live. It goes out live, I think as far as like the central time zone.”

So then he said, ”I want to change the second song to 'War' by Bob Marley. And she'll do it a cappella. And there's a very special thing she wants to do since 'War' is essentially about child abuse. At the end of the song she wants to hold up a photo of a child and make a statement about child abuse, okay?” So I went as far as to get her the photo of a child, talked to Lorne about it, talked to the director, basically tell him he's got to zoom in on her and get a close-up of her with this photo. And when we did the dress rehearsal she sang ”War” and held up the photo of the child and I think she said, ”This is what we have to protect,” or something. The house was captivated. She's giving this exhilarating performance by herself.

And then during the actual show, I remember I was in the studio watching her and I started feeling nervous and I thought that my nerves were due to the fact that since she was doing it a cappella, she was taking longer than she had at dress, and I was afraid that she was taking too much time. So I walked into the control room and just as I did, it happened - and I looked up at everybody, and they were all in shock. And they refused to turn on the applause sign after she ripped up the picture of the Pope. And I think that was the cla.s.siest move in the whole history of television - not cueing applause.

And then everybody was basically just in shock except for Lorne. Lorne was the only one that didn't seem like completely out of his mind. One thing I've always respected about Lorne is that he has this real hard-on for any kind of censors.h.i.+p. He does not want anything to be censored. He wants things to happen as they happen.

The big issue at that point was, does she go on for the good-nights? Does she get up there and say good-bye with everybody like a legitimate cast member? And Lorne decided that she should, which is a decision that he got f.u.c.ked for afterwards but I'm sure would stand by today. Because there she was, she went out and she did something extraordinary - and blasphemous in some people's eyes - but he was able to maintain some kind of respect for her, some kind of respect for the whole process of the show by letting her do that.

LORNE MICHAELS:.

I didn't know it was coming. Here's what I think was happening that week, which was the other story: Tim Robbins, whose film Bob Roberts we first ran as a short, like a three-minute film, in the '85 season, was the host and had written a piece about GE dumping PCB's into a river, which we had all heard at read-through. The sentiments behind it were heartfelt, but it didn't work as comedy. It didn't get picked because it didn't play. And I think Tim was fearful that I might be under some sort of GE thing that I was not going to allow that to happen. So after one of the musical intros, he wanted to wear a T-s.h.i.+rt that had a GE logo with a bar across it, and I said, ”Be my guest,” you know. ”I don't think that General Electric” - which by then owned NBC, of course - ”will suddenly grind to a halt because of this. Sat.u.r.day Night Live is its own thing. It has its own sort of beliefs and standards” - or whatever.

What everybody forgets is that music wasn't the closing thing, there's an act after it. So now after Sinead tears up the picture, we have to go do a comedy act. Well, there's complete silence in the studio when it happens. The switchboard's lighting up, but we're not anywhere near the switchboard; we're just getting ready for the next sketch, which we know is not going to play. I was stunned, but not as much as the guy from the audience who was trying to charge her and destroy the show while she was singing. He had to be taken away by security.

Now there's silence and we've got to do a sketch. The sketch unravels. But now Tim Robbins has got to come out and stand beside her for good-nights. It wasn't like somebody holding up her LP - of course, saying ”LP” dates me now. What I'm saying is, it wasn't promotional. I think Tim Robbins was wearing the anti-GE T-s.h.i.+rt. For him that would have been an enormously big statement, to be defying a corporation while you're on it. And that was sort of the revolution that was going on that week. That was what people were focused on. People at the network were very focused on what Tim Robbins was going to do about GE, and I was less so because I have more confidence in GE. But there's a lot of people whose job it is to antic.i.p.ate trouble, and they were all on the Tim Robbins issue. And suddenly this girl tears up a picture of the Pope. When she did the Dylan concert the next week at the Garden, they booed her. I don't think she understood the scale of what she was doing. It was martyrdom. We didn't quite get what it was.

WARREN LITTLEFIELD, NBC Executive: All in all, even when it was, ”Oh my G.o.d, Sinead O'Connor tore up a picture of the Pope,” as I said to Lorne, ”Lorne, when we go too long without controversy, something's wrong. This show is supposed to rock, it's supposed to be the adolescent that's not obedient to authority. And if we lose that, then we don't have that show.”

LORNE MICHAELS:.

I think it was the bravest possible thing she could do. She'd been a nun. To her the church symbolized everything that was bad about growing up in Ireland the way she grew up in Ireland, and so she was making a strong political statement.

RICK LUDWIN, NBC Vice President for Late Night: That was truly a Danny Thomas spit-take moment on my part. I jumped out of my chair. I was in Burbank watching the live feed in my office. When I'm not in New York, they send the dress rehearsal to me on a teleconference line, and then of course later I can punch up the East Coast in my office and watch the live show at 8:30 California time. So I was sitting in my office in Burbank and literally jumped out of my chair when she tore up that picture. I just knew we were in trouble.

DAVE WILSON, Director: It was a little unnerving. I was more upset that she had hidden it from us than I was by the act itself. In rehearsal, her manager had asked if we could use only one camera because of the type of song it was; they would like it not interrupted with intercutting. And then he asked if she could hold up a picture of starving children, and that's what she did at rehearsal. It was a very tender moment, actually. And then to change it all into this whole Pope thing - I think everybody felt they had really been railroaded. I was angry.

I made sure that n.o.body pushed the applause b.u.t.ton so we went out on a quiet studio. I gave the order.

LENNY PICKETT, Band Leader: Things like the Sinead O'Connor incident have happened from time to time, somebody's done something outrageous, and I hate to say this, but it's kind of more delightful than anything else - to see something that amazing on live television. It's what everybody secretly is waiting for. That's why it's still an interesting show after all these years, because people know anything might go down. And when it does, it's exhilarating as much as anything else. I mean, it's not like you want to see those sorts of things, but at the same time, when they do happen, you're aware that you were just partic.i.p.ating in an event.

And to know that there's always a potential for that to occur is sort of wonderful.

Once that uproar subsided, Sat.u.r.day Night Live returned to its version of normal, concentrating on comedy. Michaels was coming under increasing pressure from the network to churn out recurring characters that would bring the audience back week after week and maybe, potentially, be spun off into NBC sitcoms of their own. That turned out to be only a bean counter's pipe dream - though some SNL cast members have wandered off into prime-time sitcoms after leaving the show.

JULIA SWEENEY:.

I did the character Pat at the Groundlings, and it was part of my audition for Sat.u.r.day Night Live. I'd been an accountant for like five years, and there was one person I worked with in particular who had a lot of mannerisms like Pat. This person sort of drooled and had the kind of body language of Pat. I started trying to do him. I was testing it out on my friends and they were just like, ”Yeah, it's good, but it doesn't seem like a guy that much.” Like I couldn't quite pull off being in drag convincingly enough. So then I thought, maybe that's the joke. I'll just have one joke in here about we don't know if that's a man or a woman just to sort of cover up for my lack of ability to really play a guy convincingly.

I think it was like the Christmas show or something - a John Goodman show. I put it up with Kevin Nealon in it. Just showing how humble I was about that sketch, I didn't even cast the host opposite me. I just thought, ”Well, maybe the host needs a break.” And they put it on as the very last sketch of the show. And I didn't think it got that great a response. I felt it was just okay. I felt happy with it, but it wasn't like, ”Oh, new recurring character,” even. And the audience responded, but I think they were also really confused by it, or creeped out by it.

A couple weeks later, though, Roseanne hosted, and she had seen that show and she said, ”Oh my G.o.d, we've got to do that character.” And I said, ”Oh, okay.” So Christine and I wrote a Pat sketch for Roseanne and I to do, and when I came on during the sketch, I got like this fabulous entrance applause, as if the audience knew the character. That was actually one of the most beautiful moments in my life. And it was completely unexpected. I knew there was never going to be a moment like that again.

People would always ask about Pat's s.e.x, and I didn't have an answer. To me, Pat by that point had sort of taken on its own personality. It's almost like I was - this sounds really actor-y, but I felt like I was just playing Pat - Pat was this other person. And I didn't know Pat's gender either. It was more like I had channeled this person than created it.

DANA CARVEY, Cast Member: Most of the writers want to be performers. But I was naive, I didn't know that. So there was this creative tension between writers and performers. But you made alliances. It had all the resident political machinations of any large bureaucracy. You found writers who were sort of symbiotic with what your sensibilities were and you worked with them. It was good to write with people who had Lorne's ear and could go into the special meeting where the sketches were picked.

Toward the last couple years I hooked up with Robert Smigel and I'd go around the office doing Johnny Carson. Not the Rich Little version, which I thought was great, but, ”That's funny stuff. You're a funny young man. Will you come back and see us again sometime?” I think Johnny said that to me every single time I was on his show. Robert picked up on that and we wrote a sketch. He's a brilliant writer.

Johnny liked some of the sketches we did. The one that was called ”Ca.r.s.enio” he liked because he saw we were poking fun at a.r.s.enio Hall as much as at him. There was one that I thought was kind of mean. It portrayed Johnny as senile and out of touch, and that one I just regret, because it wasn't my intent. When you play Carson, when I was in the moment with Phil, what really comes through you is sort of just charm, just incredible likability and charm. He never really patronized a guest, and that's why he could sit out there with a five-year-old or a hundred-year-old and really make it work.

JAN HOOKS, Cast Member: I remember during the Gulf War, when we were all so terrified. They had security guys with earphones in the studio who were packing lead and all this stuff. There were even bomb threats. Phil and I had a sketch and I just looked at him and said, ”I'm not doing it, I'm not going out there, I can't go out there.” And Bonnie Turner came up and said, ”Now come on, you're with Phil.” Phil just offered his arm and I went out with him.

DANA CARVEY:.

One night that was a breakthrough for me is, I'd done enough of the show that the audience knew me, and I'd done enough George Bush cold openings that I was comfortable, and I remember right before I went to air, I just said to myself, ”The cue cards are suggestions.” Because Lorne doesn't like ad-libbing. I thought I'd be in trouble when I went off the script, but that didn't happen. Lorne always likes it when the room is full of laughter.

DAVID SPADE:.

One of the b.u.mmers was, we did a prime-time presidential special, an election special, and it was a debate among Bush, Perot, and Clinton. So they said, ”You're going to play Perot.” I wasn't on the show a lot. It was kind of exciting. Phil was going to play Clinton, and Dana was going to do Bush. I thought, ”It'll be perfect. I'll do a funny accent; it'll be a lot of fun. So we did the special and we filmed the debate ahead of time. I got in the Perot makeup, Dana got into his Bush, Phil got into Clinton. We did the wide shot, and we all walked in. Clinton did his speaking first, then Bush did his. When it got time for Perot, they have me step out, they have Dana redo his makeup as Perot, and then he comes back in and does the close-up.

It was humiliating. It was me just walking out, and it was Dana doing the fun stuff. So I was basically an extra - after forty-five minutes of makeup. It was just that Dana is really good, and they want a cast member doing that, and I thought they were over a barrel because he couldn't do both. It was a special with all three of them, and they would all be in the same shot sometimes, so I was going to win. And I didn't. And I was like, are they finding new ways to humiliate me?